From the Americas to Asia, neoliberal policy restructuring continues to present major challenges to educational equity. In Hong Kong, teacher educators grapple with training students in pedagogy they believe in, versus the daily status quo of high-stakes exam prep, privatized "shadow education," and a system seemingly pushed to the brink…

This article introduces Tofa'a'anolasi, a novel Samoan research framework created by drawing on the work of other Samoan and Pacific education researchers, in combination with adapting the 'Foucauldian tool box' to use for research carried out from a Samoan perspective. The article starts with an account and explanation of the process of…

Within postsecondary education, the assessment of effective teaching has largely relied upon student evaluations of teaching. However, the process through which teachers make sense of their student evaluations is unclear. A research team of six undergraduate nursing students and four nursing educators explored the research question: How do nursing…

This essay takes a look at what I call anti-progressivism in education or, more particularly, criticism of progressive education that was so vocal and visceral that it earns a label, at least initially, of anti-progressivism. After a brief introduction discussing the terms in general, I look at three instances of anti-progressivism in the 1950s…

This essay argues that Coleridge's "Kubla Khan" is a poem about narrative and specifically focuses on the narrative construction of possible worlds, or even utopian worlds. It notes two pairs of narratives. In pair one the utopian narrative of the monarch's decree which seeks to build a space of pure pleasure is in opposition to the…

Poetry is about the experience of meaning as well as the meaning of experience. To read a poem is to feel one's way into the inner workings of its language, rather than to peer through that speech to an extractable truth. Most students of literature today have difficulty in grasping the performative or rhetorical dimensions of the texts with which…

Situationists have suggested that educational efforts to improve character and instill virtues should be abandoned, as individuals' behavior is predicted by contexts and situations rather than by character traits. More recently it has been suggested that civic education and especially the effort to cultivate civic virtues are ineffective for…

With reference to Eva Hoffman's Lost in Translation (1989) and four other texts I examine how translingual writers represent experiences of bringing what Hoffman calls 'terms from elsewhere' into dominant cultural dialogues. Alongside Hoffman's memoir I consider BulgarianFrench philosopher Tzvetan Todorov's "Bilinguisme, dialogisme et…

Many Critics believe that Henry James has set the definitive standards of modern fiction writing. Undoubtedly his groundbreaking article "The Art of Fiction," which published for the first time in 1884, has a major contribution in developing the theories of fiction writing. The term Organic Unity has derived from a major Formalist…

This is discussion of one of Leo Tolstoy's fictional dramatisations of aggressive but dull-witted pedagogy. In "Anna Karenina," two adults badger a lively, deep-souled, active-minded boy, Anna's son Seryozha, to learn his rote-lessons.

This article examines communities of practice as an example of a theory applied within higher education research. It traces its origins and meaning, reviews its application by higher education researchers and discusses the issues it raises and the critiques it has attracted. This article concludes that while, like all theoretical frameworks,…

"Practicality Studies" (Janssen, Westbroek, & Doyle, 2015/this issue) starts with a critical commentary on "Principled Practical Knowledge: Not a Bridge but a Ladder" (Bereiter, 2014) but consists in the main of an essay on what the authors consider to be "really" practical knowledge for teachers. The gist of…

Question formation is a basic part of teaching and learning English. However, teachers often focus on the ability to form the question properly and not as much on the quality of the information the question is seeking. Whether teaching English language learners or students who want to be English teachers, teachers need to carefully consider the…

Critical thinking is one of the skills that exist in the Turkish course curriculum and is aimed to be acquired by students. The objective of the study is to determine prospective Turkish teachers' perspectives regarding the concept of critism, which is both a mental exercise and carries an important role in the world of ideas. In order to assess…

This paper reveals and analyzes the cinematographic, political, and aesthetic transitions intersecting two Southern Cone films that premiered concurrently in 1991: the award-winning Chilean movie "La frontera" by Ricardo Larraín and the forgotten Argentine independent production "La redada" directed by Rolando Pardo. Despite…